According to a recent study conducted by Sharaholic, Pinterest drove more referral traffic to sites in January than Google+, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and MySpace all combined. In addition, it’s threatening to unseat Twitter, Google news, Google images, Gmail and Stumble Upon in the coming months to slide into the number two spot behind Facebook. Since July 2011, referral traffic from Pinterest has grown from 0.17 percent to 3.6 percent in January 2012. While Facebook holds the top spot at over 25 percent of all referral traffic, the rate of growth from Pinterest is astounding for a social network that’s so young.
While Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen believes that Google+ has recently reached over 100 million users, Google’s social network isn’t driving people to other sites on the Web according to Sharaholic’s data. While the percentage of referral traffic may grow over time as more Google products are integrated with Google+ profiles, the lack of referral traffic suggests that content isn’t being shared on the service or users aren’t paying attention to content that is shared on Google+. However, sites may also see more Google search traffic as Google+ author profiles are linked to articles on the Web and search rankings may potentially increase over time.
Similar to Tumblr, Pinterest is an extremely visual social network. Sites that offer large resolution, beautiful images with smart, intelligent content are far more likely to be shared than sites with lower quality images and poor content. Content from sites around the Web are “pinned” to a virtual cork board broken up into a wide variety of varied categories such as photography, DIY, home, women’s apparel, pets, fitness and architecture. Users can create their own boards on the service and “pin” anything that they see on the Web. Pinterest has also rolled out a variety of tools to pin content including a browser bookmark and on-site buttons.
Similar to a service like Twitter, users can follow other users to watch what they pin. In addition, users can follow specific boards rather than following all of the boards of a particular user. While users can also “repin” content found on Pinterest on a personal board, they can also like content on the site as well as leave comments for other users. On each pin and repin, a link back to the original content is included. This allows users on Pinterest to visit the site where the content originated and look around for similar content.
According to a recent demographic study conducted by Ignite Social Media, Pinterest’s audience is predominantly made up of females between the ages of 25 to 54 and content that appeals to females ultimately sends more referral traffic back to sites around the Web. In addition, Pinterest users are likely to have completed some college courses and make between $25,000 to $75,000 a year. The study also found that Pinterest users are likely to originate in the mid-west United States.
While Pinterest still remains an invite-only social network, Pinterest users are currently allowed to invite an unlimited number of friends to the service through the admin interface. Brands, particularly fashion labels and clothing stores, are also flocking to Pinterest to advertise new products and attract the attention of consumers. Online shopping website Etsy is probably the most successful example of attracting consumers with over 44,000 followers on its Pinterest brand page. Every time Etsy pins a new product to the page, it can directly influence potential customers and attract new sales on the main site. Other brands are also using the social network to run contests or use boards as a virtual focus group through the commenting system.
Your graphic does not agree with your article. The graphic depicts YouTube in 2nd position and Pinterest in 5th position, but the article claims “Pinterest drove more referral traffic to sites in January than Google+, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and MySpace all combined.”
Are you being disingenuous, inaccurate or lazy?
I don’t see what graphic you are referring to?
Where there is now a photo of a keyboard in front of a piece of ‘framed art’,
http://cdn3.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/cache/2012/02/pinterest-computer/1177926222.jpg
there was a bar-chart graphic depicting declining “Ranking” from Facebook at #1 through YouTube,Twitter, YAhoo, Pinterest and finally g+ at #9.
http://cdn2.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/pinterest-google.jpg
(Isn’t local cache a wonderful thing?)
So now that changes have been made to the page and some work done twice, I can see that it’s not ‘lazy’. I think ‘disingenuous’ is leading here, with trailings of ‘deception’.
Did you not see Mike Falcy’s reply as to why he swapped out the graphs? It depicted pageviews, not referrals. Sounds fair to me.
“I can see that it’s not ‘lazy’. I think ‘disingenuous’ is leading here, with trailings of ‘deception’. ”
You sound like a moron. Please go troll another site. This one is for honest, genuinely nice people. And you don’t sound like that person.
Mike’s reply had not been posted at the time. And since the article cites referrals, not pageviews, it would have been ‘fair’ to to not have an unlabelled ‘pageviews’ graphic in the first place. I’m happy to see the correction, which is the real purpose for my having posted in the first place.
Far too many blogs, ‘news magazines’ and aggregators/repeaters, in their haste to make their own content also make hasty errors. Just look at your local broadsheet or tabloid that leaves out words or paragraphs on a daily basis.
As for ‘moron’, maybe you need to educate yourself and develop some personal etiquette as well. Start here:
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=100948
http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/2011/01/10/48262/media-faces-scrutiny-over-reporting-errors
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/156515/the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections-2011/
http://www.missmanners.com/
As for ‘troll’, I’m sure that DT staffers work hard and dilligently, maybe needing a correction or two from time to time. For you to attempt to drive away readership is truly ‘disingenuous’.
” I think ‘disingenuous’ is leading here, with trailings of ‘deception’.”
I don’t think anyone is trying to be dishonest, and not sure why you would think there is deception here either haha. Mike’s explanation sounds fair to me and there is no reason to try to make a story out of false information just for the sake of doing it, and certainly not on something as mundane as a survey about Pinterest lol.
Yes, my comment may have been a little sharper than necessary. Perhaps the result of viewing an accumulation of errors. Please take it in the more positive spirit as I’ve explained to TECHFREAK.
No worries, please let me know if you see any more mistakes. It’s definitely not something I am happy seeing, and I would rather address and fix them than ignore them.
Sorry for not responding earlier. I swapped out the the graphic for the EH bar graph before heading out to the gym this morning. The previous graphic was referring to pageviews or another metric, definitely not referral traffic.
Thanks for the catch, Addressee!
I wonder what type of users and visits the site generates. I consider myself pretty plugged in and only learned of the site a week ago and know of no one who uses it.
My wife is completely addicted to Pinterest. Personally I don’t understand what all the hype is about. So you pin things you like to boards….its a video bookmarking site? And the business model is what exactly?
Seems like one of those no business model sites that will ultimately turn to some form of advertising to monetize the traffic. I’m now dying to get in and see what its about, but now I’m even more confused about how to sell anything but coupons and stuffed animals on the site.
That’s amazing since it’s still an invite site.
Referrals from Google+ – is the REALLY REALLY wrong metric to focus on now. Why? Because Google+ is NOT a link sharing network, like Pinterest or StumbleUpon. The first priority of Google+ is not to generate external links, but to engage INSIDE Google+, which it can do to a great extent without generating a single external link!